The premise is that the world of breaking tech news via blogs is so stressful that it causes its practitioners to have unhealthy, even fatal lifestyles. Writer Matt Matt Richtel paints a picture of adrenaline-fueled desperation:

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Writing about a topic in a competitive environment has always been stressful — just ask the journalists who toiled at newspapers in the days when every major American city had more than one. Freelance writing — which blogging most often resembles — also has always been a tough job. But for those who burn to write — and writing is a compulsion, even an addiction — it’s a joy, not a burden.

Richtel’s piece looks at only one type of techblogging — the breaking-news blog, where writers take pride in getting stories online seconds before the competition. But that’s not the only type of techblogging; there’s the type I do, which is aggregating entries to provide a bigger picture, as well as punditry. While I wouldn’t necessarily describe my work on TechBlog as leisurely, it’s hardly the virtual sweatshop Richtel describes. (It’s also just a part of my day job, though I’d love to be doing it full-time.)

And he only deals with techblogging. For many bloggers who write about other topics, blogging is calming, cathartic, an outlet for frustrations, a way to explore dreams, a way to feel like you’re making a difference. It is human expression at its most basic.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet — who says he was interviewed for the story, but “didn’t make the cut” — puts it into perspective:

And that brings me to my point with Matt. Yes, blogging is stressful. Yes, it can be insane. But is it any worse than being a corporate lawyer? How many of those folks dropped in the last six months? How about mortgage brokers? Hedge fund traders? FBI agents? Any job where you gnash your teeth together? We write for a living, yap all day and don’t have to wear suits. You could do worse than blogging.

Let’s put a little perspective on this blogging thing. You could be getting shot at in Iraq. You could be a single mom working three jobs to stay afloat (Happy Birthday mom). You could work in a coal mine. You could be in a life and death battle with Leukemia. You could be doing any one of thousands of high-stress jobs. Sure, the Web has a lot of stress but let’s get real: If you’re stressed out over 5,000 RSS feeds chances are good you’d be stressed by any profession you chose.

Dignan, a former player of contact sports such as rugby, says he prepares for the rigors of his profession each day by working out. Indeed, surviving a stressful job is best accomplished by being physically up to the task.

Hmmm. Maybe it’s time to lose some weight and get active again. I know, I’ll start . . . a diet blog! That’s the ticket: more blogging to help me survive blogging!

My post wasn’t exactly, um, complimentary of the story which, by the way, was written for the print edition of the NYT. I have a hard time thinking of a dead-tree story as “linkbait”, though it certainly garnered more than its share of attention online.

The people who rule the blogosphere are the link aggregators. This is why Dwight’s “linkposts” are so widely read. They save me from having to filter through 20+ blogs I’d have to read to find all the sources, and have witty one-liners to boot!